1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a flat panel display, and particularly to an active matrix-typed flat panel display, whose brightness is corrected based on inputted signals.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, according to a trend toward more light-weight and small-size electronic equipment such as personal computers and TVs (televisions), display devices have become required to be reduced in size and weight. This requirement has led to the development of flat panel displays rather than cathode ray tubes (CRT).
Such flat panel displays include a liquid crystal display (LCD), a field emission display (FED), an electroluminescent display, a plasma display panel (PDP), etc.
Typically, an active matrix-typed flat panel display including a plurality of pixels arranged in a matrix form displays pictures by controlling brightness of each pixel based on given brightness information. As a kind of active matrix-typed flat panel display, a liquid crystal display is a display device in which transmittance of a pixel is varied depending on a voltage applied thereto. In addition, an organic electroluminescent display is a display device in which a fluorescent organic compound is electrically excited and light is emitted from the excited compound.
In order to represent various levels of brightness in such a flat panel display, methods in which a display controller controls voltages of picture signals depending on brightness of ambient light have been conventionally used. However, there generally exists a limit to a level of data voltage expressible in a data driver, the level having a one-to-one correspondence to a gray level.
For example, assuming that a data voltage has 64 levels between 0 V (volt) and 5 V, when a white level is set to 3V in order to represent low brightness, a level of data voltage can have only levels between 3 V to 5 V. In other words, when the picture is displayed with low brightness, the number of expressible gray levels is reduced.